Mary Stuart Masterson

Masterson returned to features with the Catholic school comedy "Heaven Help Us" (1985), portraying the first of several roles in which she essayed tomboys. With her hair cropped short and her lean, gangly look, she excelled at the roles, although she came close to being typecast. A rare exception was her turn as Sean Penn's love interest in the dark, fact-based thriller, "At Close Range" (1986), Francis Ford Coppola also offered the performer a change of pace, casting her as the college sweetheart of a Vietnam-era soldier in 1987's "Gardens of Stone". (Coppola even hired Peter Masterson and his wife Carlin Glynn to play their real-life daughter's on screen parents.)